What I Read in April 2023

April saw me get back into reading and I’m so glad. I delved back into the bookstagram community and remembered how much I love chatting about books on a smaller, everyday level. April did also see me renew a vested interest into Netflix and Disney+, so there’s only a few books to share this month. But I didn’t read any Ursula Le Guin, which I was so certain I would!

It was also Earth Day at the weekend, an apt time to read the inspiring Wilding by Isabella Tree and reread my beloved The Overstory by Richard Powers. If you take one thing away from this month’s reviews, let it be to pick up a nature-focused book in May and discover a little more about the planet we share.

Wilding by Isabella Tree

Rating: ★★★★★/5

I’ve been on a real journey with nature-themed fiction and non-fiction over the past couple of years and had been thoroughly excited to get round to Wilding by Isabella Tree, a non-fiction that describes the creation of Knepp Wildland, the first large-scale rewilding project in lowland England. Isabella runs the estate with her conservationist husband and both the scale of the project and the scope of this book is extraordinary.

I first became interested in ‘rewilding’ last summer when I began working on a collection inspired by the topic at work. (I work as a copywriter at a sustainable luxury fashion brand.) Since then, I’ve been happily and curiously delving into rewilding further and this book will tell you exactly why I’ve been SO interested. Within Wilding, Isabella traces the entire history of the Knepp Estate and how she and Charlie Burrell came to the decision to leave agricultural farming behind and, instead, leave their grounds to nature. It describes in detail all of the benefits and all of the magical wildlife that has since returned to Knepp and to England.

A book I recommend to anybody that loves nature, walks and the British countryside.

Wandering Souls by Cecile Pin

Rating: ★★★★/5

“An extraordinary story of the journey of one young family through love, loss and unwavering hope.”

I picked up Wandering Souls by Cecile Pin on the recommendation of a friend who thought I’d love it, and she was SO right. This debut from Cecile Pin is just gorgeous – raw, emotional and interrogative of themes of grief, generational trauma and the immigrant experience. The main character is Anh, a second-generation immigrant from a Vietnamese refugee family, alongside her brothers Thanh and Minh. While escaping Vietnam by boat – a generation known as Vietnamese Boat People – the family is divided forever. The book traces their journey to a refugee camp in Hong Kong and then to an early-Thatcher United Kingdom. Between chapters from Anh’s POV, there are heart-wrenching chapters from their lost younger brother Dao, and news segments that cement the reality that this rooted in real stories and real trauma.

As a daughter of immigrants, I felt many parts of the novel deep in my soul. Pin does well in sharing the experience of a second-generation immigrant and that of an East Asian existing in the UK. There are scattered anti-Asian slurs throughout. I enjoyed this book, but found it was far too short and I’d have enjoyed a deeper dive into the family’s life in the UK once they’d settled – instead the final third of the novel felt a little rushed.

Tokyo Ueno Station by Yu Miri

Rating: ★★★.5/5

So happy to delve back into some of my beloved translated Japanese magical realism fiction with Tokyo Ueno Station by Miri Yū. I acquired this copy when my friend Emmie was downsizing their book collection and it’d been on my ever-growing TBR for years.

Tokyo Ueno Station is a curious little novel – literally: it’s just 197 pages – set in Tokyo, largely at Ueno Park, and following the story of Kazu. It is quiet and still, like many translated Japanese fictions seem to be, and showcases, through Kazu’s life, the lives of some of Japan’s most vulnerable people. Ueno Park houses many ‘homeless villages’ where people flocked to after several societal incidents: market crashes, asset loses, post-tsunami destruction. It is a compelling tale that quizzes what it means to live, all set upon a backdrop of many Japanese histories.

I feel like I wanted to love this novel more than I did. There’s a gloomy melancholy throughout, and the protagonist Kazu seems to have little drive to better improve his circumstances. Of course, this is likely purposeful of the author, but it makes it difficult to see the light as a reader.

The Overstory by Richard Powers (reread)

Rating: ★★★★★/5

I said that 2023 would be a year of rereading some favourite books, and I kick-started that with a reread of my beloved The Overstory. This book is a real tour de force, capturing the intertwined lives of eight strangers, brought together by the natural world and by trees. It’s a gorgeously captivating, slow and meandering piece that leaves you craving slowness, greenness and a slower pace. I’d forgotten how much I adored the first third of the book! The characters – and trees – are beautifully, yet simply, brought to life and I genuinely loved it even more the second time ‘round.

DNF: The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller

This month, I also started reading The Paper Palace which had been on my TBR list for months and on my bookshelf for just as long. Sadly, I ended up DNF’ing it after about 100 pages.

I recall this one being really talked-about and armed with rave reviews, so I picked it up in a Waterstones deal a few weeks ago. Sadly, it and I didn’t get along: there’s several traumatic incidents and topics that really warranted trigger warnings; the cast of characters felt unbearably beige; there’s a lot of words for not much being said or a plot progressed; and, the timeline format made it feel really stunted and disjointed.